It is easy to hate on the Paris Agreement. It was always an imperfect, lowest-common denominator solution to the challenge of climate change. Its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, failed out of the gate, in no small part because it had something the Paris Agreement lacks: actual teeth. The Kyoto Protocol contained binding emissions targets for developed countries and penalties for non-compliance. Though the protocol was adopted, and even entered into force in 2005, it was dead in the water after the US Senate failed to ratify it over fears it would hold the US to unreasonable standards and harm the economy.

The Paris Agreement emerged from this failure. It is a bottom-up mechanism, one that sets collective goals and then lets countries decide their best path to contribute to those goals. Of course, it is weak. It has no binding emissions targets and no punishment for non-compliance.

Nevertheless, the agreement represents a collective statement. We understand climate change as a shared challenge requiring a shared response. More importantly, it establishes a framework for this response, one built on transparency, reporting, and peer pressure. It also recognizes that some countries bear more responsibility, and others will feel the impact disproportionately.

In a consensus-driven process, the agreement would only ever be as ambitious as the world’s least ambitious countries. Likewise, it would never infringe on sovereignty more than the world’s most powerful country would allow.

Surviving through global upheaval

The Paris Agreement thus represents what was achievable in 2015. In the decade since, the world has seen a broad withdrawal from multilateralism, with pandemics, wars, and rising nationalism undermining international trust and cooperation. We could not hope to achieve such an agreement now.

Given this, it is significant that the Paris Agreement has survived. It is precisely because it lacks enforcement mechanisms that countries continue to show up, even as the world becomes more divided and entrenched. It is a flawed creation, but also resilient. Even the twice-over withdrawal of the world’s largest economy has yet to kill it.

It is fair to argue that the agreement has not been effective so far. Emissions continue to rise. Warming continues to increase. The world is on the threshold of passing the Agreement’s lower temperature target of 1.5°C.

Yet, we can’t pronounce it a failure either.

Asking the right question

We must consider its effectiveness compared to the counterfactual case we would be facing if we had no international agreement. Studies and modeling find that warming to date would be higher under a “no climate policy” baseline, though even in these scenarios the effect of the agreement is only moderate. As important – if not more important than its effectiveness so far – is what the agreement means for the path forward. Without it, we would have no way to collectively assess progress and no structure to chart shared, next steps. In other words, if we didn’t have the agreement, we would have to invent it.

So, when we ask whether the Paris Agreement is failing, we are asking the wrong question.

As long as countries continue to deliver updated climate plans in a timely and transparent manner, and as long as each of those plans is more ambitious than the last, then the agreement is working.  It is governments that are failing: to articulate ambitious policy, accelerate the energy transition, deliver finance for the most vulnerable countries, and follow through on their commitments. It is up to citizens to hold their governments to account. The Paris Agreement gives them the tools to do so.